In an interview published today with Advertising Age‘s Simon Dumenco, ex-New York Post Page Six reporter Ian Spiegelman claims exactly what we all suspected about the paper’s parent company run by Rupert Murdoch ever since Dubya’s ill-fated Iraq invasion: “News Corp’s enemies were the usual bunch: Anyone who thought the war in Iraq might not be the best of all possible adventures to pursue, especially if they lived in Hollywood.” [Murdoch, of course, owns 20th Century Fox and Fox Broadcasting.]

Spiegelman, who’s hawking a new novel, also has more to say about which Murdoch-mandated friends Page Six was expected to flatter: “The People’s Republic of China. One time I was looking into an item about a Chinese diplomat and a strip club when word came from somewhere up above that China had carte blanche. The message I got was more or less, ‘If you mention Chinese, you’d better be ordering lunch.’ [Murdoch’s infotainment company, of course, does lotsa biz there.] Also, Nicole Kidman. Someone in the hive-mind thinks she’s a personal friend, so you couldn’t write a word against her. At least that was true for a good part of my duration.” [Kidman, of course, is Murdoch’s Australian compatriot.]